In all thy humors, whether grave or mellow,
Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow,
Hast so much wit and mirth, and spleen about thee,
That there's no living with thee, nor without thee.
- [Friends]

In England we see people lulled sleep with solid and elaborate
discourses of piety, who would be warmed and transported out of
themselves by the bellowings and distortions of enthusiasm.
- [Preaching]

In love to our wives there is desire, to our sons there is
ambition; but in that to our daughters there is something which
there are no words to express.
- [Parents]

In my Lucia's absence
Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden;
I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear,
And grief, and rage and love rise up at once,
And with variety of pain distract me.
- [Absence]

In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men
very often talk like the weakest; for indeed the talking with a
friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
- [Conversation]

In short, heaven is not to be looked upon only as the reward, but
as the natural effect, of a religious life.
- [Heaven]

In that disputable point of persecuting men for conscience sake,
I see such dreadful consequences rising, I would be as fully
convinced of the truth of it, as a mathematical demonstration,
before I would venture to act upon it or make it a part of my
religion.
- [Persecution]

In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you
find ten of a contrary character.
- [Wisdom]

In the founders of great families, titles or attributes of honor
are generally correspondent with the virtues of the person to
whom they are applied; but in their descendants they are too
often the marks rather of grandeur than of merit. The stamp and
denomination still continue, but the intrinsic value is
frequently lost.
- [Ancestry]

In the loss of an object we do not proportion our grief to the
real value it bears, but to the value our fancies set upon it.
- [Fancy]

In the recognition of beauty, the eye takes the most delight in
color.
- [Beauty]

Instability of temper ought to be checked when it disposes men to
wander from one scheme to another: since such a fickleness
cannot but be attended with fatal consequences.
- [Temper]

Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of
great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and
therefore choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the
reader rather than be at the pains of stringing them.
- [Method]

Irresolution on the schemes of life which offer themselves to our
choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest causes
of all our unhappiness.
- [Irresolution]

It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a
private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of
wit, and vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world; or
from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in
those persons with whom we converse.
- [Scandal]

It happened very providentially, to the honor of the Christian
religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate
ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were at
their height.
- [Christianity]

It has been said in praise of some men, that they could take
whole hours together upon anything; but it must be owned to the
honor of the other sex that there are many among them who can
talk whole hours together upon nothing. I have known a woman
branch out into a long extempore dissertation on the edging of a
petticoat, and chide her servant for breaking a china cup, in all
the figures of rhetoric.
- [Talking]

It is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the
misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order to
be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now
think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share they are
already possessed of, before that which would fall to them by
such a division.
- [Misfortune]

It is a fine simile in one of Mr. Congreve's prologues which
compares a writer to a battering gamester that stakes all his
winnings upon one cast, so that if he loses the last throw he is
sure to be undone.
- [Authorship]

It is a folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure,
and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious
persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have
passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense
against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to
greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a
Roman triumph.
- [Censure]